CHAPTER TEN #3
‘I didn’t think any more about her, and probably wouldn’t have again if I hadn’t come across her a day or two later, further along the trail.
In fact, the only reason I knew she was there was because I heard someone crying.
There was no sign of anyone, but the distress, the sobbing wasn’t something I could ignore.
So I followed the sound down into a nook, and there she was, huddled into a ball crying as though she’d never stop.
‘I’m sure she had no idea I was there until I sat down on the grass a short distance from her.
She didn’t acknowledge me at first, but when she did …
It took a while for her to bring herself under control, but I was in no hurry.
I simply sat with her and when her breathing was steadier I asked if there was anything I could do.
‘She thanked me and said she’d be fine. I asked about her child, thinking perhaps something had happened to it and that was why she was so upset, but she said she was fine too.
“Playing,” she told me, “today she is playing in the camp.” I presumed she meant Butlin’s, which was, and still is, just along the coast or maybe one of the local caravan parks.
She spoke English, quite well, although it was heavily accented.
I half-expected her to get up and leave then, but she didn’t, and eventually we got talking, about the view and the weather, where I was from and why I was in Somerset. ’
CRISTY: ‘Did you ask where she was from?’
ROBERT: ‘I did, but she waved an arm as if to say it didn’t matter. It was pretty clear she didn’t want to talk about herself so I didn’t press it.’
CRISTY: ‘Were you anywhere near the sisters’ house at this point of the trail?’
ROBERT: ‘I’d say we were probably half a mile or so away, close to where the path forks to start climbing steeply to the moor one way and dips down gradually towards the coast the other.’
CRISTY: ‘And this encounter was before your mother told you about the little girl who’d turned up at the sisters’ house?’
ROBERT: ‘As far as I recall, yes it was.’
CRISTY: ‘And you had no reason to think the young woman you were talking to might know the sisters?’
ROBERT: ‘Not then, no. As I said, we didn’t talk about anything in particular. By the time we’d walked back to Minehead together I still didn’t even know her name.’
CONNOR: ‘Did she live in Minehead?’
ROBERT: ‘I’ve no idea. When we got to the coastal end of the high street, she thanked me for being kind to her and we went our separate ways.’
CRISTY: ‘But you saw her again after that day?’
ROBERT: ‘Yes, about a week later. She was in the park, on the same bench. When she saw me she called out and beckoned me over. She seemed a little brighter that day, and I’m pretty sure that was when we properly introduced ourselves.
She said her name was Janina and told me that she came to Minehead whenever she could to see her brother who worked at the Butlin’s holiday camp.
Apparently he’d sneak her little girl in to play with the other children and ride on the carousels.
While she was waiting she either went for walks or read books; if it was raining she took refuge in the library.
‘I’m not sure how it came up, but I recall how …
interested she became when I mentioned that my mother worked as a housekeeper for two women who’d rented a place on the edge of the moor for the summer.
She asked if I meant the Winters sisters and when I said I did she began telling me all about them and the work they did in various parts of the world to help poor communities …
I remember being surprised that she seemed to know so much, and feeling I was letting her down when I had to admit that I’d never actually met them. ’
He stopped talking as his mother gave a feisty little snore. Laughing, he said, ‘I often have this effect on her.’
‘I’m listening,’ Gita assured them, ‘just resting my eyes. Tell them about the second time you saw her with the child.’
ROBERT: ‘They were in a café close to the seafront. I was passing by on my way to the trail, as usual … The child was sitting on the lap of a young man with a hat perched on the back of his head. He appeared to be teasing her and she was trying to grab his face. I wondered if he was the brother Janina had mentioned. She hadn’t talked about a husband, at all, or about her child’s father. ’
CRISTY: ‘Did she ever tell you her brother’s name?’
ROBERT: ‘I found out later that it was Lukas, with a k.’
CRISTY: ‘What about her little girl? Do you know what she was called?’
ROBERT: ‘I tried very hard after Janina disappeared to remember if she’d told me, but I don’t think she did.’
CRISTY: ‘And she disappeared after your mother told you about the little girl at the sisters’ house?’
ROBERT: ‘I’m afraid the order of things is far from clear in my mind after all this time, but I can tell you that I had no reason, then, to connect the so-called niece with Janina’s little girl.
It was only when Mum told me about an awful row she’d overheard between the sisters and Mia’s husband that we both started to feel … I guess, uneasy?’
GITA: ‘Yes, I should have mentioned him just now when you asked if they had any visitors. I actually only saw him once and he wasn’t there for long …
Edward, I think he was called, or something like that.
I know Lottie didn’t like him, the way she talked about him made that clear.
She thought he’d only married Mia for her money and I got the feeling Mia thought the same, although she never said so.
Anyway, I don’t know what started the row off, I walked into the middle of it when he was shouting about them being insane and thinking that rules didn’t apply to them.
I slipped out before anyone knew I was there.
I didn’t want it to seem like I was eavesdropping.
I went back to my car and gave it a few minutes before going in again, this time through the kitchen.
I assumed Sadie was upstairs, or in the sitting room, but I couldn’t get to her without letting it be known I was there, and they were still shouting.
I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was very heated, and someone – Lottie, I think – said something about calling the police.
He ended up storming out, and he hit Lottie’s car with his own as he drove off. ’
CRISTY: ‘What happened after that?’
GITA: ‘Well, they were very upset, of course, but they didn’t talk to me about anything.
It wasn’t until Mia and I were on our own in the kitchen that she told me I shouldn’t take any notice of what he’d said about Sadie not being their niece.
He was just trying to make mischief, she said.
I suppose she thought I’d heard that, but I hadn’t, and it never entered my head until that day that Sadie might not be who they claimed she was. ’
CRISTY: ‘What did you do when Mia told you that?’
GITA: ‘I went home and talked to Robert and Charles about it. Charles thought I should mind my own business, but then Robert told me about the young woman he’d met a few times who seemed to be taken with the sisters, and she had a girl of around Sadie’s age …’
ROBERT: ‘It seemed too far-fetched to think they were one and the same child, and I couldn’t come up with a single reason why Janina would let her little girl go.
Nevertheless I remember keeping an eye out for her after that, hoping to run into her again, or at least to spot her somewhere with her child, but I never did. ’
GITA: ‘You went to Butlin’s to look for the brother.’
ROBERT: ‘Yes, I did, and I was told he’d left, quite suddenly, no forwarding address.’
CRISTY: ‘Did you happen to get his surname?’
ROBERT: ‘It’s possible someone told me, but if they did, I can’t recall it now. It almost certainly wouldn’t have been English.’
GITA: ‘Then the next thing we knew the sisters had gone, taking Sadie with them – and Robert was getting ready to go back to Australia and I suppose … we just got on with our lives.’
Realizing they were at the end of what Gita and Robert could remember, Cristy signalled for Connor to stop recording.
She was thinking now of what it was going to mean to Sadie to learn her mother’s name – and that the man in a hat whose shoulders she was riding in one of the photos was probably her uncle.
Where were Janina and Lukas now?
What had happened to them?
What about Sadie’s father?
Connor was saying, ‘We need to get Gita’s account of her time with Sadie on record. Is that OK with you, Gita? We haven’t worn you out, have we?’
‘Not a bit of it,’ she retorted. ‘I’m happy to go over things again. I’ll probably find better ways of saying them second time around. And while we’re doing that, perhaps Robert could take Cristy over to the coast path to show her the house?’